1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to web services, and more particularly, to communications between web services and mobile devices.
2. Background Art
Web services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications that run on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks. See “Web Services Architecture,” W3C Working Group Note 11, February 2004. Entities communicate with web services over a network, such as the Internet, to access the resources provided by the web service. The entities and the web service exchange messages over the network.
An entity may attempt to initiate a communication with a web service when the web service is not accessible. For example, the web service may not be accessible because the web service website is currently down, the entity is operating in an offline (not Internet connected) mode, the network connection between the entity and web service is currently down, or for other reason. Typically, if communication with the web service is not possible at a particular time, the entity must re-attempt to communicate with the web service at a later time. However, such a delay in communication with the web service may be undesirable to the entity. For example, it may be time consuming, and resource intensive, for the entity to have to repeat attempts at communications with the web service until the communication successfully occurs.
Thus, what is needed are ways of efficiently communicating with web services in environments where the web services may not be continuously accessible, such as in unreliable communications environments.